agent of entropy

made it to Atlanta on Saturday, then Charleston last night. both drives took much longer than normal, partly because i stopped to visit relatives in Mobile but mostly because i stopped every 50-100 miles to check on the oil/etc. Matilda's got some bizarre symptoms -- occasional rather-worrying vibration of the whole front end, an oil leak that looks severe by the quantity of oil all over the bottom half of the engine/etc, but she only needed 3/4 of a quart for the whole trip from OS to here, and on the last half of the drive from Atlanta to Charleston, she was getting almost 20mpg. (huh?!?)

also lost my other front hubcap. gonna try to find a pick & pull yard or other reasonable source for hubcaps that wouldn't look stupid.

i took Matilda to the mechanic (again) today. wish me luck; she needs to be in much, much better shape by the end of the week.

i'm in Mississippi now, and have been for just over a week. somewhere in the middle of New Mexico i stopped checking email, disconnected my mental tether from the internet, and it just stopped occurring to me that i could pull out the laptop, find some wireless connection, et cetera. on the one hand, it was kinda nice; on the other, well, it made communication with faraway people much more difficult, and i've had to spend a good bit of time over the past couple of days going through the accumlated mountains of email. i haven't really even begun to respond to any of it.

but...it's time to pick that back up again, and to pick up my writing, too. i have bits and pieces written down from the road, but not all that much. *laugh* i could say i was too busy living, but that's only half-true; writing's part of living, and important to me, but it was i think more that i've been letting myself rest in that on-the-road state of mind, fluid and strange and full of shifts and changes. coyote's country, indeed. and, to be honest, once i let it slide a little it starts to pile up -- so many stories to tell and hear, the mass of emails to filter through, plans to get settled and sorted. but now i have a little more downtime, the evenings quiet and solitary after the rest of the house goes to sleep, and that's a good time for writing.

two weeks ago: ( New Mexico, winter's last stand, the Frontier and the sunset )

a little more than one week ago: ( the long straight shot east, mechanics and the Alamo, a jazz cafe with pirate daydreams... )

more stories later; it's time for sleeping now. tomorrow i may head over to New Orleans, and if Common Ground can make use of me for the afternoon i'll do whatever work i can. either way, i may take the trip in just to get out a bit, talk to them and find out how i might be useful over the few weeks, and meet up with folzgold for going-out-and-doing-something-interesting. (it's been a little while since i called someone up who i didn't know at all, out of the blue, and attempted to make plans. always a little awkward, but hey, (as Arlo Guthrie says) i'm not proud. no idea if Common Ground will have work for me tomorrow, and i have no concrete plans, but at the least i'm sure there's somewhere to get a po-boy and a bottle of Barq's, and there's always the Cafe du Monde and the river and Lafitte's; i'm sure there's good music being played somewhere, or a decent game of pool, and i can wander alone or with company, either way.)

also, just as a PSA: when we drove around New Orleans, down through the lower 9th Ward, the parts of the city that had been flooded by the levee breaks, Common Ground were just about the only people we saw out and working, getting things done. they're doing soil bioremediation, general cleanup, healthcare, and eviction and legal defense. they're not perfect, but they seem to be doing good work that very, very badly needs to be done. they have a wishlist for the clinic and for general relief efforts, and folzgold was saying they have a serious need for longterm volunteers; i think they're also happy to have people come down for a week or two. if you have time or money/useful-supplies that you can spare, and any interest in helping, they seem like a good place to give it to.

three:
lunch with kilroi, Erin, and Charisse at Roscoe's. Merritt Bakery makes some tasty waffles, but Roscoe's has them easily beat for the chicken & waffles combination...they make some damn tasty fried chicken there, and the waffles are the thin Waffle-House-style, and taste of cinnamon and nutmeg. after lunch, we trekked across LA to Costa del Mar & Huntington Beach, maintaining mostly-imperturbable zen through the traffic. walked around Costa del Mar with Elise & Flora-the-dog, down past the cliffside beach and back around again: Catalina Island in the distance, and huge ships hovering on the horizon. had coffee with Chris & Elise. "you know, your life kinda sounds like a long series of drunken bets," he says, after hearing the stories of Matilda's aquisition and how the roadtrip was planned. it doesn't sound like a compliment to me, but it made me laugh, and i'm having a hell of a good time, so i'm not going to argue.

Elise ran off to her class, and we grabbed Chris and drove up to Huntington Beach to meet walkinthewilds for dinner. there was a small army of screechy cheerleaders, but we managed to stay out of trouble, get food and drink, and meander down towards the beach, where there was a bar and a fire. many stories traded and told, and much laughter -- a fine evening indeed. we dropped Chris back off at his house, played with Flora and the overgrown-hamster-dog, left a small gift of some Mary Prankster albums, and rolled on back out the door to crash at walkinthewilds's house, who we then shanghai'd into coming to Vegas with us. mwah-hah-ha!

four:
breakfast at a little French-esque cafe in Irvine with walkinthewilds, Chris, & Elise, and then the three of us and Matilda headed northeast to Joshua Tree, where we climbed around like monkeys for a few hours all over the Wonderland of Rocks, small mountains of huge rounded boulders. from there we hit the long desert highways again, me grinning like a maniac and laughing to drive such a perfect car for those roads. we pulled over at the side of the highway to watch the sun fall into the mountains, to watch the colors turn, to take in a little of the desert peace with the rush and fall of noise and wind from passing trucks. the music was good, the company was good, and we came through the last hills into Vegas in the dark, and suddenly there was a city of lights, and the strip blazing out, neon and spotlights in the center.

we made it to the hotel in time to shower off the dust and sweat, and change into something a bit more appropriate. l_stboy and walkinthewilds were a little short on interesting costumery, but i did my best to make up for it. *grin* twirly blue satin skirt (with grommets and laces!), tailored dark-wine satin top, boots and stripey socks, leather jacket, and of course the top hat. we swept down through Vegas with style, panache, and hats, fed our famished bellies, and went into the theater to see Cirque du Soleil's O, which was phenomenal. fire and water, clowns and zebras, flips and dives and dancing; i was full of wonder and laughter through the whole show, and i think i could see it another two or three times and be just as charmed.
afterwards we went to Paris for champagne, cassis, and dessert; l_stboy won a little on the slots, and eventually we decided it was the better part of valor to give up at three in the morning and go to sleep instead of staying up to make trouble.

five:
breakfast in Paris at a creperie, and walkinthewilds's aunt came by to meet us. (which foiled our plan to sell walkinthewilds to a brothel before leaving town, but i suppose that's probably better in the long run.) a slow day. we said our goodbyes, went to buy odds and ends for Matilda, hung the new fuzzy dice on the rearview mirror, and finally made our escape from Las Vegas less than 24 hours after arriving. on the road again, and banzai!

six:
the winding desert highways took us to the Grand Canyon in the dark of night, but we snagged the last room in one of the rim lodges and woke at sunrise the next morning with the Grand Canyon stretching out from twenty yards outside the window, on as far as the horizon. these places...words don't do justice, and pictures can't catch the scale and depth and detail and color. it's just not possible. so, then, just this: go. get on the road, get in a plane, move, open your eyes, and come see, come walk down these cliffs and canyons and trails.

we walked down a bit of the Bright Angel Trail, which winds down the cliffside, out to the edge of a plateau, and then down the inner gorge to the river. we walked an hour down and a bit more up, and only got maybe a third of the way down the cliff. between that and the climbing at Joshua Tree, my leg-muscles were screaming, but it was a good kind of screaming. from there we drove around to the Watchtower on the east side of the Canyon for sunset, and then out on the highways again to Page, Arizona.

(more to be added later...)

seven:
Mike's coffeeshop in Page, then on to Zion, camping and thunderstorm.

eight:
Zion, Angel's Landing trail, drive down the canyon and back out again, on and up the roads to Bryce. snow on red rocks in the darkness. Ruby's Inn and a good hot bath.

nine:
it's sunny and snowing. breakfast with country music ("whiskey for my men, beer for my horses"), too cold for trail rides, heading out now to drive through Bryce and look at sculptures made by hands of wind and ice and the movement of the earth.

...l_stboy and walkinthewilds have some pictures up on their journals, so take a look over there.

a beginning: i'm down in the south bay, a gorgeous cool spring day with sun and clear air. came down last night, had a bottle of Blackened Voodoo with l_stboy and sat around being chill with him & C, watching Grey's Anatomy. the car's clean on the inside, camping gear is loaded, and i'm repacking the last of my bags so that they make some sort of organizational sense. i've had coffee, and grapes and blackberries and toast for breakfast. in a very short while, we'll head out and hit the road, down to Monterey, maybe through Big Sur, down to Hearst Castle, and then from there on down to LA. my hair is much shorter than it was on saturday morning, the underside is shaved, and i have funny little chin-length bangs where fyfer trimmed off the overbleached bits -- i like it. i've got dark-red and dark-blue hairdye with me, and i'm hoping to have a chance to dye my hair in LA.

also a beginning: when i was loading the car last night, i set the hula girl on the back end of the roof of the car. and, due to it being dark and me being all full of fretfulness and stress...forgot her. i remembered 15 miles down the freeway, but she was gone, and my housemate couldn't find her anywhere near the house. it's a lesson in ephemerality and letting things go, i suppose, and while i'm very sad that that little bit of art isn't coming with me on Matilda's dash, it seems an appropriate enough lesson to be reminded of right now. so we'll be keeping an eye out for another swivel-hips hula girl, or whatever else seems like good mojo for the road. and...i do have a monkey, and a plywood violin. *grin* Manhattan's a long ways away, but i'll get there before too long.

scheming: l_stboy asked the other night, "So, how do you feel about Vegas?" i grumbled a bit, and he added, "We could swing through Vegas on the way to the Grand Canyon and catch one of the Cirque shows there," which sounded much more appealing. *grin* he's off getting us a pair of tickets for a 10:30pm show on Saturday, right now. so it'll be LA tonight, Vegas on Saturday. hell yeah.

- been craving pizza for several days now, so i stopped in at Zachary's on the way home and picked up a half-baked stuffed pepperoni & mushroom. it's exactly the right thing. *grin* i like oakland.

- bought a National Parks Pass, which should arrive sometime next week. looked through the National Parks website at most of the parks we're thinking of visiting, and...hell yeah. i'm psyched. *grin* not so sure about camping at all of the places, but we'll figure something out. also looked into the possibility of doing a trail-ride at the Grand Canyon, Zion, or Bryce...that would be amazing, but only if the horses are well-cared-for and healthy, and if it isn't just easy-chair riding.

- talked to lindalee; it looks like it should work out to visit with her in Santa Fe. very much looking forward to that.

- remembered to move the car. no parking ticket for me tomorrow. yay.

- went though the short-term health insurance brochures again, trying to make sense of the coverage plans, and i think i know which plan makes the most sense for me.